News feminist philosophers can use

Mating preferences of men and women: not so different after all

For more than three decades evolutionary psychologists have advanced a simple theory of human sexuality: because men invest less reproductive effort in sperm than women do in eggs, men’s and women’s brains have been shaped differently by evolution. As a result, men are eager for sex whereas women are relatively choosy. But a steady stream of recent evidence suggests this paradigm could be in need of a makeover….

The proportion of mating effort dedicated to short-term mating was the same for men and women. Similarly, both men and women showed an equivalent tendency to lower their standards for sex partners, and men did not report feeling constrained to have far fewer sexual partners than they truly desired….

Beyond simply poking holes in the standard evolutionary psychology narrative, researchers have another paradigm ready to put in its place: U.S.C.’s Wood and Alice Eagly of Northwestern University propose that men and women adapt their outlooks to fit their society’s division of labor between the sexes, which results from physical differences in size, strength and mobility (during pregnancy)….

“In more equal actual roles, men and women have more similar mate preferences,” Eagly says. “In very different marital roles that confine women to a domestic role, men and women choose differently.”

…In Wood’s view the traditional evolutionary psychology paradigm was attractive because it explained the pattern of sex differences people saw around them in a way that made those differences seem natural. It assumed that men and women have always interacted in the way they do now. “We would say that men and women have evolved to act in a lot of different ways,” Wood says. “We’re the ultimate flexible species.”